Wilderlands Revisited

Rob Conley has, evidently, run a D&D campaign in the Judges Guild “Wilderlands” campaign since 1980. He has worked on the Necromancer Games version of this classic, perhaps THE classic, “sandbox” milieu and has produced a personalized guide to the “Wilderlands” based on his own years of work and play.

The book is broken down into three basic subject headings, and these divisions correspond to the classic titles of each of the three “Little Brown Books” of the original game. Conley’s contribution is explicitly geared towards the “Swords & Wizardry” clone, but could be easily used with any other clone or related game.

What I appreciated most about the first section of the book was the way that the author saw all of the various races having an original and organic relationship. Bred by powerful and advanced creatures, elves, hobbits, gnomes, and dwarves all had assigned functions, roles, and jobs. Even though those creators and experimenters are no longer on the scene, the races they created – for specific purposes – still bear the stamp of their first design. Thus, the “origin story” for these races makes a kind of sense. The various races are around for a reason and their characteristics and purposes make sense.

Conley uses his own characteristic guidelines for rolling stats for each race. When I first looked at these, they seemed to like they could be potential “balance killers.” When I read the book through a second time, I instantly dismissed these concerns. Instead, if anything, they seem like inspired OSR-type house rules. Elves are immortal – deal with it. Hobbits are lucky and get to re-roll one saving throw a day – learn to live with it. While not promoted as a “modular” supplement, I can easily see importing many of these rules right into my own game without hesitation.

Conley’s description of goblins as “obsessive” has been remarked on by other OD&D enthusiasts. The goblins all have one little area of obsession and pursue their obsession with manic gusto. Any goblin village or encampment, then, is filled with these obsessed little monsters. This short and eloquent characterization is enough to give the DM many ideas on how to convincingly “play” a goblin. Many of his other race “stereotypes” (pardon the expression!) are equally useful.

Perhaps because he has been influenced by D20, Conley stuck some some “skills” in here. Naturally, I just ignored them. Likewise, I didn’t feel like I had much use for his new player classes, but I could easily appropriate them for NPCs.

Another innovation, here, is the way Conley sees each of the 18 sections of the original “Wilderlands” as containing a separate and distinct kind of campaign setting. One area, for example, is set up to provide a “King Arthur” type situation. Another might be perfect for “Ancient Egypt” action and another for “Jungle” or even “Classical Greek” style adventures. These differing opportunities, I believe, existed in a kind of latent sense in the earliest versions of the campaign (merely because of the names and common terrain of each map), but it took Conley to bring this sort of possibility to the surface. If people get tired of playing in a Conan-like “barbarian” setting, they can travel over to another map in the same campaign and do something much different.

On balance, I feel that this supplement’s real value lies less in its expansion on the original Judges Guild material, and more for the way it lets us see the various creative and independent directions an OSR-style DM can go in. I highly recommend it for this reason alone.

Quotations…

“In the sharing of fun and hobbies, the true meaning of friendship most often manifests itself”

– David A. Hargrave

"Take my word for it, there is no such thing as an ancient village, especially if it has seen better days, unillustrated by its legends of terror. You might as well expect to find a decayed cheese without mites, or an old house without rats, as an antique and dilapidated town without an authentic population of goblins."

- Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

"And if you've got no other choice
You know you can follow my voice
Through the dark turns and noise
Of this wicked little town"

- John Cameron Mitchell

“We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”

- C.S. Lewis

"Games were all that made things serious or gave them form. To be a serious person, it was necessary to embrace one."

- Robert Stone

"Maturity consists in having rediscovered the seriousness one had as a child at play."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves.”

- Carl Jung

"Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth."

- Jean-Paul Sartre

"Wilderlands taught me how to make and run a good sandbox setting. Arduin taught me how to not limit my imagination."

- Illés Tamás

“Even if you have no intention to ‘do magic’ when you play D&D, you are immersing yourself in an alien, magic worldview which can gradually change the way you think about life and spiritual matters.”

- Bill Schnoebelen

"Not far away were dreary hills, rising higher and higher, dark with trees. On some of them were old castles with an evil look, as if they had been built by wicked people."